Here in New York it's upfronts week — upfronts being the dog-and-pony shows put on by each major network to announce their respective fall lineups. Existing shows find out who gets a stay of execution (Law & Order returns; my mother rejoices) and who gets taken out behind the barn (so sorry, Sarah Conner Chronicles). And new shows get trotted out like debutantes. It's all done for the advertisers, who use the upfronts to start gauging where they'll be spending their budgets come September.

But of course it's also all sort of done for us, the almighty viewers. With the caveat that all I've seen are short clips, below are the new shows that will have me planted in front of the idiot box this fall. When I'm not watching Law & Order.

The Soup's Joel McHale, maybe one of TV's most underappreciated funny guys, plays a lawyer who is somehow forced to return to community college. Classmates include Donald Glover (of Derrick Comedy) and Chevy Chase.

V, a re-imagining of the 1984 series of the same name, begins when humans wake up to find giant spaceships hovering over every major city on the planet. Scott Wolf of Party of Five stars, and I'll be starting an office pool to pick the episode in which he'll scream, "It's a cookbook!" after meeting the foxy alien leader.

A highly anticipated Family Guy spin-off, The Cleveland Show follows Peter Griffin's slow-talkin' friend Cleveland Brown as he leaves Quahog to marry his high school sweetheart and start a family. This just has to be better than American Dad.